election

Why I let lady issues determine my vote

If you refuse to look away while one political party puts personhood for fetuses above personhood for women, this election is relevant to you.

The GOP platform does not make exceptions for abortions in cases of rape or incest, or even some insignificant detail like the life of the mother. They tell us rape resulting in pregnancy is a gift from god. They tell us some girls “rape easy.” I could go on, but I’m sure you know the rest. (If you don’t, the gist of it is really, really misogynist.)

I’m hardly saying President Obama is perfect, or even that another Obama presidency will prevent a gaggle of old white men from talking about vaginas. But a non-vote allows them to continue talking about women as second-class citizens. A non-vote doesn’t combat the notion that we’ll go slut-crazy with unfettered access to birth control. A non-vote won’t keep funding for Planned Parenthood—an organization that provides cancer screenings, treatments of STDs and low-cost contraception as 97 percent of its services. And most of all a non-vote doesn’t tell Republicans that these issues are real, deciding factors for many women of all class, color and circumstances, no matter how much they try to tell us otherwise.

Obama has let a lot of us down on a lot of things to be sure. But he (and the Democrats behind him) continue to do all right when it comes to ensuring women have basic agency over their own bodies. And I haven’t even mentioned the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act or basic civil rights for our LGBTQ community.

Plus, why would you vote for a party that erects a “lady tent” to convince us ladies to like them as much as we all like pink.